Cameron Crowe's Next Feature Adds Danny McBride, Offers Clues To Plot

A director known for his affecting dramas will soon team up with a comedic actor known for making profanity-laced references to genitalia, as Danny McBride will continue his side streak of dramatic features by joining Cameron Crowe’s untitled next project. The news was unveiled by the film’s star Bradley Cooper while giving an interview with The Huffington Post about the DVD release of Derek Cianfance’s The Place Beyond the Pines. Is it just me, or is everybody else also picturing McBride riffing on Tom Cruise’s manic agency departure in Jerry McGuire? “I’m not gonna do what you all think I’m gonna do…”

This probably isn’t what everybody thought McBride was going to do, especially coming off of Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg’s hit comedy This is the End. McBride will co-star with Cooper, Emma Stone and Rachel McAdams in the drama, but the film’s plot is being kept under wraps for now. That doesn’t mean there aren’t clues and speculations abound however.

General consensus is the film will be a rewritten version of Crowe’s Deep Tiki, a project that was first conceived as a Ben Stiller/Reese Witherspoon project back in 2008. The Wrap’s sources say Cooper will star as a defense contractor on assignment in Hawaii to oversee a weapon satellite launch, and that Stone will be playing his liaison, an Air Force pilot. Mysterious island forces, as well as a sentient computer, help to convince them to sabotage the mission. There’s no word on who McBride will be playing, but it seems like a talking computer would be right up his alley.

This all jibes with the initial description of the film, which The Playlist detailed back when the project was first reported. As well, there was a casting call put out last week for a young Caucasian boy to play a kid “obsessed with Hawaiian myths and folklore, and always has a video camera in his hands, taping everything.” Does that mean this will have some kind of a found footage element from a child’s point of view? Boy, I hope not.

McBride will be taking over HBO in the next few months, as Kenny Powers will be back to kick ass and kick more ass in the fourth and final season of Eastbound & Down which premieres this September, and he’ll also star in Larry David’s made-for-TV comedy Clear History, which is set to air in August. On the feature film front, he’ll team up once more with James Franco for Franco’s next directorial effort, an adaptation of William Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury, while their other Faulkner adaptation together, As I Lay Dying, will see a limited release on September 27.

Expect more info on Crowe’s next feature in the coming months, as Cooper confirmed the film is set to begin filming in September.